When it comes to keeping history alive, a little TLC is key, says Peter Goodchild, owner of Goodchilds, Inc., an antiques, restoration and custom furniture business in the Dallas Design District.

For the recent redesign of the historic DeGolyer Estate at the Dallas Arboretum led by Emily Summers Design Associates of Dallas, Goodchild was asked to oversee the care of the home’s extensive collection of 15th- and 16th-century English furnishings.

From the massive pieces in the stately dining and living rooms of the lakeside property to the more refined, feminine pieces in the bedrooms, Goodchild and his team attended to every tabletop, chair leg and finial to ensure the pieces mirrored their original glory.

“Everything was in pretty good condition,” says Goodchild. “Most antiques in people’s homes are. People don’t live in barns. So they just needed to be gone over.”

Goodchild enjoyed working on the furniture collection, which somewhat follows a timeline of English styles.

“These were the earliest pieces, these carved pieces,” he says of the Elizabethan cupboards and consoles in the dining room. “They didn’t have a lot of tools and equipment. They just made stuff out of trees lying out in the back garden.”

As you move into the bedrooms, he says, the pieces become more finely made and more delicate. “It’s much more Georgian,” he says.

Built in 1940 for petroleum geologist Everette L. DeGolyer and wife Nell Goodrich DeGolyer, the home was in need of an update that included modern fabrics and textures but still reflected how the rooms were used by the original owners.

The redesign was conducted in stages over three years as funding allowed. Goodchild began his commission with small jobs such as waxing the furniture. “We can do that on site so they don’t have to be moved,” he says, “which helps the furniture and helps keep the costs down.”

Most of the work on the home’s furnishings is what Goodchild calls conservation rather than restoration. “Conserving is what we’ve done here,” he says. “You’re just looking after what’s already here, ensuring that it’s not going to fall apart.” Restoring happens when furniture is damaged, say by water or fire, and must be repaired.

But Goodchild says antiques don’t have to be perfect. He quite fancies the bumps, gouges and other marks that tell a story about the piece. He points out a console in the dining room that had been through a fire and had been patched and refinished.

“When something has been around 300 to 400 years, you expect to see problems and damage,” he says. “But that’s OK; there’s nothing wrong with that.

“People tend to think that antique furniture should be really fine and have nothing wrong with it but, really, if there’s nothing wrong with it, you’ve got to doubt whether it’s as old as it’s supposed to be. You want to see things all banged up.”

Goodchild moved to Dallas about 25 years ago, bringing over the business started by his grandfather in England in 1907. The company was established to remake horsehair mattresses and moved on to other soft furnishings such as carpets and curtains. Now Goodchild focuses on restoring antiques, making custom furniture and reproducing pieces down to the detailed carvings and distressing on the wood.

The company’s biggest project for the DeGolyer house was expanding the dining room set. The original table was too small for the room, plus the arboretum wanted a larger piece to accommodate more guests for luncheons and events.

“We were toying with the idea of making it even bigger still, but the table would not have been able to support the top,” Goodchild says. “They [the design team] felt it was important to keep as much of the original piece as possible.”

Goodchild’s design retains the original table legs but required a new top modeled after the original. “We kept the same design so it will look like we haven’t done anything,” he says. “Because that’s the whole idea of it.”

Goodchild also expanded the set of hand-carved chairs, building six side chairs and two armchairs to match the four originals.

“The first thing people do is get the old one and new one together and look for the differences,” he says. “Traditional stuff tends to be more difficult in that you have to copy something. You’ve got to have someone who understands European carving. With contemporary furniture, you’ve just got to be more keen on the line and proportion of it.”

When trying to find an old and new chair to show their inconspicuous differences to a visitor, even Goodchild had difficulty telling them apart. “There’s a very subtle difference in the grain of the wood, and if you look really close, you can see some of the distressing on it,” he says. “On the original ones, the distressing is slightly different, because it was made by a different hand.”

Goodchild has worked on several large projects recently, from the restoration of the Stoneleigh Hotel to refurbishing truckloads of antiques that were damaged during hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

He says he especially enjoyed the DeGolyer project because of all the people involved. “This could have been challenging because there was a committee and funding and many who might want a say in it,” he says. “But everyone was helpful. They just let us get on with it.”

The DeGolyer Estate is located on the grounds of the Dallas Arboretum, 8525 Garland Road. Admission to the home is included with garden admission, which is $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and $8 for children. Parking is $7. The home is open year-round for tours from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday. www.dallasarboretum.org.

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